Q: How did you become a film reviewer?
A: Weirdly, I’d never reviewed a film before I came to the Guardian. I read English at Cambridge in the 1980s when there was no such thing as film studies (the subject was frowned on the way English was frowned on in the era when studying classics was the only respectable thing). In the 90s I was a general Europhile columnist and journalist on the London Evening Standard writing about books, politics, TV … almost anything but cinema. Then I had a footnote in journalistic history when I became the first (and still I think the only) person in the UK to be sued for satire: I’d written a spoof version of Alan Clark’s Diaries and he took us to court for “passing off”. He won. It all created a massive fuss at the time and it made the then Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, take an interest in me. He simply rang one day and asked if I might be interested in being the film critic. I don’t know if Alan expected me to play it cool, or say that I had to discuss it with my agent or something – but I basically bit his hand off. I shouted “Yes!” before he had finished speaking, like Meg Ryan faking orgasm in When Harry Met Sally.
Q: You were in the Footlights at Cambridge, did you plan to go into acting at that time?
A: I sort of considered it, yes. But I didn’t have the utter fanatical dedication that you need to be an actor, and I also wanted very much to be a writer. I have in fact done a tiny bit of acting: I read aloud my own script for a Radio 4 monologue comedy called For One Horrible Moment, and I acted in the Sky TV sitcom Baddiel’s Syndrome with David Baddiel. Some people watch this on YouTube and I am sorry to say they are a bit critical of my performance.
Q: Can you remember the first film you reviewed?
A: Yes, Notting Hill! I enjoyed it, and it’s still my second favourite Richard Curtis script, behind his masterpiece The Tall Guy. Julia Roberts’s “I’m just a girl …” speech is now often mocked, but I think she delivers it exceptionally well, and it’s still her best role. Hugh Grant is good too.
Q: How has the role of film critic changed since you started?
A: In some ways it’s the same and in others it’s changed completely. I still have to do what I always do – produce a review column, by Wednesday morning every week, containing one lead review and half-a-dozen or so shorter reviews. In other ways, the web and social media has changed things – enlarging the workload and accelerating the critical process.
Social media means everything is instantaneous: you tweet about a movie almost immediately after seeing it; your review has to be ready within the next few hours; you tweet a link to the review; people tweet what they think. Maybe it’s neurotic and frantic, but it’s also very exciting and pleasurable.
It used to be that people read the review and then saw the film. Now it’s the other way round: they see the film and then, on the way out of the cinema, get out their smartphones and read your review. And then they start vehemently letting you know what they think. You get reviewed! It’s been a sobering experience for all critics to realise that the one-party state of media and publishing – which lasted from the invention of the printing press in the middle ages to about 2004 – is over, and they themselves are in the firing line.
Q: Does your mood affect the way you receive a film?
A: Yes, sometimes. I occasionally call it “getting out of bed the right side”: being in a placid, complacent mood which means I can’t respond to a difficult or challenging movie. But usually the film itself determines my mood.
Q: Are there any films that you got completely wrong in retrospect?
A: Yes. I remember I was crashingly wrong about Raoul Ruiz’s Proust adaptation Time Regained. I said it was ridiculous when I saw it in Cannes. Then I saw it again in London and I realised it was really good: a new review and a mea culpa was in order. The other movie I was obtuse and fantastically toffee-nosed about was The Devil Wears Prada. I just didn’t like it. But soon afterwards I saw it on TV and realised it was actually a really well made and thoroughly enjoyable movie and Meryl Streep is just brilliant, and so are Stanley Tucci, Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt.
There are also a handful of other films that other people insist I’ve got wrong in retrospect and I insist I haven’t: I think Fight Club and Inglourious Basterds are both overrated.
Q: Which other film critics do you rate?
A: There is Kate Muir who has now crossed the great divide, leaving criticism to be a screenwriter. I also love Manohla Dargis of the New York Times and Stephanie Zacharek of Time. Anne Billson is a terrific film writer and blogger, and I also admire Anthony Lane at the New Yorker and Jonathan Romney at Film Comment. Mark Kermode is a tremendous critic and broadcaster. Nick James’s editorials at Sight & Sound are a monthly treat. Jonathan Rosenbaum’s book Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See is a classic. I also love Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film. Judith Williamson is a great film critic: her review of Raging Bull in the now defunct listings magazine City Limits inspired me to see the film, and I incidentally discovered her media studies classic Decoding Advertisements at Cambridge.
Q: Do you talk about your response to a film with other critics or keep quiet about what you plan to write?
A: I always keep more or less schtum.
Q: Is it hard to find something new to say about the seventh instalment of a blockbuster franchise?
A: No I don’t think it necessarily is, or it shouldn’t be. I don’t think critics should be snobbish or wearily dismissive of big franchise movies. Good and bad, these films have a massive reach. They are part of the reason why writing about cinema is exciting. You’re writing about something that everyone can see all over the world. It is a mass medium and as a critic you have to plug into that.
Q: Are there any films that have left you completely stumped?
A: Yes. I think it’s fair to say the later, more terrifyingly obscure films by the Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa have had me over a barrel, intriguing though he always is. I like his earlier, more accessible work, such as Bones. I have called him cinema’s Samuel Beckett, very materially because his later stuff, like Beckett’s, is so uncompromisingly difficult. His film Colossal Youth has always defeated me, although many critics think it a masterpiece.
Q: Do you think TV has superseded film?
A: I think writers are increasingly drawn to longform television because it offers such mouthwatering opportunities. Companies such as Amazon and Netflix are commissioning so much original drama that it’s virtually a gold rush. But the big screen is always a huge draw and I don’t see it being superseded any time soon.
Q: Do you ever watch films just for pleasure - and if so can you switch off your inner critic?
A: I always watch films for pleasure and never switch off my inner critic. The two go together. But yes, I often go to see movies a second time with my son, Dominic. We went to see Paddington 2 the other day and it was an absolute joy to see it with him.
Q: Do the recent accusations of sexual harassment affect the way you watch movies made by or starring certain individuals?
A: The incredible thing about all of this is that still no actual criminal proceedings have been brought. Still nothing. This whole wave of anger could start to recede, and a specious backwash of forgiveness could even start to begin for these disgusting people – Harvey doing a tearful Oprah interview etc – without anything concrete happening.
For me, it is incredible to think about Louis CK’s film I Love You, Daddy: I laughed uncomfortably a lot at that movie at its premiere, along with all the other right-on Louis CK fans. I enjoyed the outrage and the provocation. I thought that was the whole joke: that this could not, should not, happen in real life. I thought that it was a gross-out self-satire, self-criticism or even a kind of performance art self-harm. Now I can see that there was also a great deal of hiding in plain sight. I was naive, though I still think it’s a very well made film. Nothing will change until more women are brought in at every level: producing, directing, writing, craft.
Q: What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
A: Freddy Got Fingered, starring the now forgotten comic Tom Green.
